Wrapped up

They sit.

Intertwined.

Wrapped up in each other and Faulkner.  He is the expert, reading one book while she is the student, reading another.  His brow is furrowed as he lines under first one word, then another.  Her eyes are laughing, this is more fun than she'd imagined.

Hers isn't an easy book to understand.  She balances it on his knees and glances up.  Should she interrupt again?

As if he hears her thoughts, he looks up from his book balanced against her arm and smiles.

Permission granted.  Always he wants her to ask questions, to feel free to dive into any book when he is near, confident that she will never drown, never get lost, never feel incapable of understanding what is before her.

This is the dream come true.  Two kindred souls matched and mismatched on a winter's afternoon, warming their toes in Yoknapatawpha County.

Micro planners

Proper planning is an important part of getting lots of things done.

Whether those things are done right or not, whether they get done or not, can depend on something as small answering the phone.

The tiniest vibration in someone's pocket today can mean the difference between three hundred people leaving home to attend a lecture, or a completely empty auditorium devoid of anything except the ghosts of speakers past.

This is the age of micro planners and maxi doers.  People cram more into the time it took their grandparents to arrive at an event, than those same grandparents even dreamed of putting into a whole day.

And, still, we want to enjoy each thing to the fullest.

It requires we truly learn to live in the moment and let go of all those things that are both past and yet to come.  The present is so rich, so full, so tightly packed that nothing else is necessary . . .

. . .  or possible.

Snow-pocalypse

This is the winter of arctic conditions.  I don't remember a year when the weather was so cold for so long. 

I left the heartland with its wind chills of 29 below zero and made a mad dash for the south.  For the first time in my life I wanted to be a snow bird.  Maybe it comes with age, I suspect it is a case of cabin fever.

Driving out of the snow belt into the spring like conditions of Northern Kentucky, I was charmed by the sun, the sight of grass uncovered by snow, the warm weather when I stepped out of the car.  I took off my winter parka and placed it in the back seat of my car.

I had entered the magical oasis of the south!

Driving deeper and deeper into those fabled states of warm weather and balmy winters I congratulated myself.  And then . . .

As if I were the snow queen, towing winter on a long chain behind my car, I brought the ice and snow to the south.  The words are different.  They call it a hard freeze.  The snow isn't as deep, barely an inch, but the final situation is the same . . .

Or worse because they are not prepared for ice and snow.  Roads are sheets of ice.  The weather is icy cold.  People are sliding off roads.  Cars are abandoned on giant Interstate parking lots and everything is closed.

This is the winter of the snow-pocalypse.

Once upon a time

The gingerbread man was a sweet little cookie who had no idea how much baggage the fox was carrying when they met.

It wasn't until they were half way across the river that it began to dawn on him that he might be in a very bad place.

At the very least, he was in a place where he didn't belong. 

Instead of freedom he found himself surrounded with water that could dissolve him, spirit and all, and sharp teeth that could devour him in one bite. 

He put himself in a bad place and it was his job to get himself out.

The gingerbread man failed.

I try valiantly not to do those things anymore.

It's not what you think

People who know they know, paint the pictures that hide reality from the rest of us.

Blind obedience.  Absolute trust.  These are the things that will ultimately bring the world to its knees.

Not because truth has no value, but because like anything of value, it can be hijacked and used for all sorts of evil in the name of good.

Trying to destroy the bad is counterproductive. 

The one who sifts through all the ashes, all the hype, all the "truths" and pulls from it what is worth keeping while letting the rest go, opens the door to the light.

What I see is up to me.

Honesty

Absolute honesty is only good in a perfect world.

A world where every word and action is carefully thought out and accepted as a long term reality before taking place.  Otherwise there is a danger that it is only a cover for venting, a passive aggressive excuse for hurting.

As much as people often claim to eschew little white lies, they may be the mediation between peace and violence.  Understanding is often limited.  What I perceive and what you mean may not even be close.  I cannot see the pictures in your head, the reasoning that came before your outward response.

Just as I handle fragile things with white cotton gloves, I handle certain things in my life with white lies, softening the blows that are unnecessary in most cases anyway. 

A computer should be absolutely honest, but honestly?  The rest of us aren't perfect enough to handle it.

Waiting

Waiting has been the province of women since time began.   We wait for soldiers to return, for children to go to sleep, to wake up, to come home.  We wait to see if loved ones get the jobs they want, pass the exams they take and the list goes on.  Of course men do these things too, but I know a woman's perspective better.

I can lose myself in work.  Doing a job, especially one I am good at, takes up most of my concentration.  Still, there are things so important that they always hover nearby, like shadows of feelings that sift down upon me changing the color of everything else.

Then the waiting feels interminable. 

Progress

The unknown is uncomfortable.  Corner a fox whose foot is broken and he will snarl and snap and hiss, because he does not understand I want to help him.  People are not much different.

I am a modern woman who believes if I practice those things modernity tells me are healthy, wise, and up to date, I am way ahead of my ancestors.

Yet I still dance around the same fears, superstitions and road blocks my ancestors have for hundreds of years.  The tempo changes.  The notes are rearranged, but the thoughts, the fears, the dearest hopes, are pretty much the same.

The unknown is uncomfortable.  Until people really understand that -- there will always be corners and those who snarl and snap and hiss, believing they are protecting themselves -- and me.

Sometimes

Kiss it and make it better.

Sometimes that's about the best I can do.

And I can't even do that if you live half way across the country.

Human beings are so much more limited than we want to believe.

So we listen to each other and we dream up positive solutions to help each other . . .

Kind of like a mental kiss . . . and sometimes . . .

It works!

The art of changing

Sometimes I look at the situations people live in, or with, and think, "This is depressing.  No amount of chemicals are going to make you feel better until your life changes."  It doesn't matter whether those chemicals are prescription meds or street meds.

There was a cartoon I saw rather frequently when I was very small.  It showed a bunch of dark little men dancing in the woods.  They drank bottles of milk and suddenly everything became light and happy.  I was struck by that even at the tender age of three.  It might have been the music that accompanied it, or the imagery, but I have never forgotten it.

Now, I speak from experience.  Light comes from all sorts of different sources.  There probably is a truly clinical depression whose need for medicine is absolutely verified, but I suspect that more often it is life that makes us sad.

Being willing to go through the agony of change takes courage and determination, but it's worth a try.  I spent nearly twenty eight years afraid to change something and only after that change occurred did my depression go away.  After that I learned to make changes more quickly.

Not just the act of changing something, but the art of changing the right thing the right way makes life better, it takes practice.  Like learning anything, I failed, I tried different things, I floundered and eventually I found a sort of balance that works most of the time.

No one is deliriously happy all the time.  If they are there is probably something missing, but simple contentment interspersed with those crazy happy moments and some legitimately sad ones is normal.  That is what I shoot for and it seems to work now.

I can live with this.

Auld Lang Syne

I spent New Years Eve with good friends this year.  We went out to dinner, played games and sang Auld Lang Syne at midnight.  It was one of those sweet nights that reminded me how much life changes.

I wonder if people know how long and in how many countries the world has been singing Auld Lang Syne at the start of a new year? Robert Burns sent a copy to the Scot's Musical Museum saying it was a song he collected from an old man.  The tune is an old folk tune and some of the words were most definitely Burn's, but however you look at it, it's been around since way back when.

I remember when we had a stack of magazines on the lower part of the end table by my father's chair.  I took those big Life, Fortune, and Saturday Evening Posts for granted.  National Geographic was under another table.  It was a great way to learn about the world with pictures and up to date articles, most of which are replaced by the Internet now.

The morning paper was the only way to start the day.  I read the "funnies" as soon as my dad was through with them and I remember ironing the pages when I worked in the library of a large business, so the newsprint wouldn't get all over everything.

When I first learned to use a phone we had party lines and had to tell an operator the number we wanted, a three digit one!  Record players played 45s, 78s, and 33s and we would go to the record store to stand in a sound proof room and play the records before buying them. Checking out books in the library meant getting a card, date stamped by hand and stuck in a pocket in the front. 

Grocery stores were found on almost every block or two.  They were small mom and pop places where he was the butcher and she was the check out.  Peanut butter came in glasses we kept to drink from.  Dishes came in the laundry detergent and popsicles were seven cents.  You could buy the brand of cigarettes your parents smoked and puff powder out the end, or buy others and chew them up like the candy they were.

My sister had a Chatty Cathy that stuttered.  My brother rode an Irish Mail you had to pump like mad, but my little brother still rode the Spirit of St. Louis, a pedal plane left over from my grandfather's childhood.  I had a wicker doll buggy with small round windows and wrought iron wheels.  I had no idea how old it was.  I simply hauled my dolls, kittens and puppies around in it, dressed up in left over baby clothes.

There was a lot of diversity back then.  Everyone's toys seemed to be different from everyone elses.  Everyone's house was different.  We went to different schools and places of worship.  The only thing that was pretty much the same was kissing our fathers good bye in the mornings as they all went off to work in white shirts, neckties and sometimes suits.  Our mothers dust mopped the floors, ironed the clothes, prepared meals from food bought every day at those little stores and made us take naps on hot summer afternoons so we wouldn't catch polio.

A lot has changed.  Life is more disposable now, and yet more concerned with fairness, being green, staying on top of things.  The scale is different.

People are still basically the same.  We fall in and out of love, wish we were rich, or famous, or well, or young, or older.  We want babies and friends and things to entertain us when we're bored.  We have more time saving devices, so our standards are higher and we still don't have enough time.

And now we watch other people drop things from high places on New Year's Eve instead of singing Auld Lang Syne.  That is something I think we should not give up.

Toast

Toast!

To some people that might mean "cheers!"  Or maybe even a more sophisticated response.

To me it means hot and buttered.

There is nothing more comforting than the smell of bread cooking in a toaster, except maybe the smell of it lying on my plate, almost black, with melted butter sinking deep into the memories.

My memories of food prior to age four were mostly associated with the person I ate it with, like lunch with my daddy when he came home from the U of I to eat cheese sandwiches and vegetable soup, or eating strawberry ice cream with real strawberries in it -- again with my dad.

Otherwise my memories of food began in small town America at my grandma's house.  She always served me toast with grape jelly, on a cookie sheet in an attempt to contain the crumbs.  It was also an attempt to keep me occupied while she did the morning's housework, like laundry in the old wringer washer before she left for her real job downtown.  Grandma was one of the first liberated women, but she was not above using toast to gain a few more minutes of time without me traipsing along behind her.

Today I always feel guilty eating toast, especially with butter.  It is no longer just daily bread, now it is calories, cholesterol, even sugar if I dare to add the grape jelly, but I still love it, especially on cold winter mornings.

Here's to warm toast, warm feelings and warmer memories!

Sale!

I look at all the stuff for sale and I have to say I used to be so tempted.  But then I began to think.

If I can buy youth, or beauty, or thin-ness, then why are there still fat, old, ugly rich people?

I suppose some of them just don't want the same things I do, right?

In your dreams.

I would be willing to pretty much stake my life on the fact that most people would prefer to be young and comely if they can.

That means:  (drum roll here)

Some things just can't be bought.  Which isn't the same thing as saying they aren't for sale.

Smiley faces

I say, "Jump!"

You say, "How high?"

I watched a group of preschool children being programmed to fit into school yesterday and thought about this.  Unquestioned obedience is necessary with neophytes, but when should we stop?

What is the cut off for blind obedience, or that compulsory need to please another person?

At what point should I be willing to deal with disapproval, dislike, even hatred, to do the right thing?

I pondered this for a while and I think it is when I am capable of seeing the true ramifications of my actions.

Running head long into authority figures doesn't require courage if I don't realize what I am doing.  Any object in motion can slam into something.  It is the calculated decision to do so, knowing full well what the consequences are that makes it semi intelligent.  It may be right, or wrong, but knowing what I am doing changes everything.

The same is true even when the consequences are less threatening.  Doing, or not doing, something because it is right requires intelligence, courage and . . . love.

Children do things because it feels good, because making people frown, or look angry feels bad.  Getting past that takes more than growing taller, or getting a wrinkled face.

The empty space

Remember Disney's theme song?  "Fairy tales can come true.  It can happen to you if you're young at heart."

I heard those words in a more innocent time.  A time when fairy tales were mostly pictures in my head, drawn by words upon a page by the brothers Grimm, or the occasional school play of Babes in the woods or once a movie about Cinderella.  I watched Wendy sew Peter Pan's shadow on through the black and white window of our old Zenith and winced with every stitch, then clapped with all my heart to save Tinkerbell.

It was a time when having a way to get to the library was a rare treat, so I gobbled up the books on my father's shelves and dreamed the rest myself.

It was a time that left my imagination lots of room to expand and be original.

It kept my heart young and the fairy tales came true!  Of course there were ogres and trolls, but there were also little princes and glorious dragons and, just like Puff, they stayed if I wanted them to.

It is the silence that kept me young, the space to dream and think, plot and plan, the empty room left for me to fill with myself.  If I were to give my loved ones anything, it would be that room.

me me me meeeeeee

The past couple of weeks when the weather forced all of us in the heartland to stay in or become instant icicles was my big chance.  I could do whatever I wanted whenever.

I got NOTHING done.

Turns out when I have to do nothing I eventually adjust and act accordingly.   Even worse, I don't do those things that do need to be done -- just not right now.  I found myself sleeping in my chair for long periods of time.  Not because I was tired.  Just because I didn't have anything else pressing.

Depressing followed.  I didn't sleep well because I slept too much.  I didn't feel awake because I was too sedentary and unfocused.
 
Being retired could be a death sentence!  Or something that could put any normal person on the funny farm.

I need something to rescue me from my dreams and ennui but nothing that impinges on my sense of freedom.  For me that means lots of little things that take a few hours, but never all day.  When people tell me how wonderful I am to volunteer for things I hesitate to tell them I do it for me!

But I  kinda do.

and the least of these . . .

There are three kinds of people in my life.  One is the person who I simply have business with.  We relate on a superficial level dealing only with the situation at hand.

Another is the sort of person who grabs my heart.  Sweet and funny, looking for the best part of whatever is at hand.

And then there are those people who seem to thrive on difficulty.  They don't seem to really want solutions because changing things would leave them bereft of a whole way of life.  Good hearted, but oblivious of their part in that world of woe, they march valiantly on doing the same dysfunctional things over and over and over.  These people wear me out.

I am close to both of the last two.  I sometimes wonder how they see me?  A huge part of my foundation was to be a long suffering noble person, so I know I fall back on that occasionally.  But I do try to find the more productive, sunnier side.

Why keep leading a thirsty horse to an empty spring?  Because the way to the other one is unknown and scary.  There might be dogs, or wolves and maybe it will be empty too and . . . maybe if the horse ever gets a drink of water he will gallop off and leave me all alone!  And these thoughts are not even in the conscious level of being.  They are simply woven into the frame and fiber of those dying of thirst, filtering out all new ways of being and doing.

Still, I keep offering them cups of water . . .

Teddy bears

My teddy bear was such a sweetie.  He listened to everything I said and never said a mean word back.   Willing to cuddle as long as I wanted, he also soaked up tears better than any other thing in the world.

He would pretend with me, drink endless cups of imaginary tea and engage in excursions into nearly any fantasy I came up with.

He was the perfect companion, a role model I should have based all others on -- and yet I nearly forgot about him.

You should never commit to any relationship that doesn't rival your teddy bear's.

Eating naturally

I grow up eating pot roast for dinner.  Meat is comfort food. 

I visit a slaughter house, or read about one, and comfort becomes intermingled with horror.   Add the way animals interact with me and it becomes even more difficult.  Of course even plants raise concerns if I spend too much time thinking about it.

It seems to me that the only creatures who can eat according to their nature must be ones who don't contemplate their food, or come up with some kind of personal form of disassociation that separates them from the act..

And still . . . I love to eat.

Just thinking

I began obsessing about getting older.  I don't sleep very good.  I don't have a lot of energy.  I am often too tired to even begin to do all the things I think of and want to do.

That is a sign of aging.  I know it.  I have read about it.

Sooooo . . . I must be getting older!  That is frightening.

Of course when I think about it, I never slept very good and I never had as much energy as I wanted, not even at three.

I remember lying awake for what seemed like years every night.  I remember dreams where I kept walking uphill in the snow and all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep.

My mind can come up with a billion things to do, a million ideas to ponder, a zillion creative thoughts, but my body says, "Wait!  I'll think about that tomorrow."  (Or maybe that was someone else's body, but you get the idea.)

Thoughts like that wear me out!

Water

I found myself doing something I have often done in the past, but haven't indulged in very much lately.

Recognizing it mostly by the way my bath called to me, I realized how simple and mundane a person I truly am.  In a world with five year plans and retirement planning and all sorts of other planning that is necessary if one wants to live comfortably, I have been just plain lucky.

I have always been good at planning, but just not great about sticking to any one plan.  I am more of a feeler, an experiencer, and my actions generally reflect what feels right in the moment.

Water gives me a focal point, one that appeals to most of my senses.  I love to gaze into it.  I love even more to immerse myself in it when there is nothing else there and that requires either a bath or a pool.

I used to float in my swimming pool at night, gazing up through the little leaf linden at the stars.  It is a primal feeling, one that I have never experienced anywhere else.

To be alone in the arms of spirit . . . 

Coady

My son wanted a playmate for his rescue dog, Sasha.  She was an Akita and they were very careful to take her with them when they went to pick out Coady.  On the day he came to live with them forever Sasha walked down to the park to meet him.  That way she sort of brought him home and all was well.

Soon my son started receiving phone calls that the dogs were at the park, but when he looked out in his back yard, both of them were sitting there smiling innocently, wagging their tails.   Imagine thinking his dogs were at the park when he had this nice big tall wooden fence around the yard! 

And then, one day, he looked out the kitchen window to see Coady coming back over the fence.  You just can't keep an old rover in, but trying became the challenge that year.

Coady was some kind of mixed breed with a collie coat and German Shepard body.  He had the biggest head I ever saw on a dog.  I could see where people got the idea that he was part wolf, but he was just a wonderful, loving, big dog who liked to lie on top of his dog house when he was outside and on a big pillow inside.  He was smart, patient, and everlastingly loyal and kind.

He had to be put down this week.  He'd had lupus for a long time and it turned out he had cancer and other things, not to mention he must have been pretty old.  The last time I was there I really only saw him once.  He'd taken to going off to be alone and sleep.

I find myself strangely sad, knowing he is gone.  There is something about his passing that speaks to my heart in ways I don't really understand right now. 

Stay warm

It is cold.  As someone pointed out to me this morning:  the difference between the temperature in my house (70) and outside (-39 with the wind chill factor) is over a hundred degrees!

It hasn't ben a huge problem for me so far.  Unlike a few years ago when snow took down the power lines and I was without lights or heat for five days, this has been pretty pleasant.  It has been mostly a matter of holing up with hot coffee and cable television.

Not exactly horrible.

There are problems though.  Tomorrow I have an 8:45 AM doctor appointment and I'm not sure I can get my car out, but I also can't call them to cancel because they are closed due to the weather and have no message machine.  And I wonder if it is worth it just to recheck my blood pressure which is fine.

At least I don't have outdoor animals to care for.  The thought of that boggles my mind.

Do you know what your grandma is doing

I remember Grandma.

Or at least I thought I did.

Now that I'm a grandma I wonder if I really knew her at all!

Funny how I see everyone through my own eyes, baking cookies, knitting scarves, watching endless hours of Jeopardy.  Reading books, walking in the woods, doing good works -- that's  all grandma's do.  Right?

Hmmmm . . .

Once upon a now

My dreams are collages of feelings stirred up in images that often make very little sense when reiterated word for word, scene for scene.  Still, they are powerful.  Primal exhibitions of the me who lives inside the body that defines me to the world.

The world has expectations.  It looks at me and sees pretty much what it expects.  Any real deviance from that would raise a ruckus few of us are up to surviving.  Getting older only lengthens the distance between what is and what should be.

People have certain expectations they want to meet before they reach the jumping off place.  Inheritances to pile up.  Memories to tweak.  Fears to subdue.  These things are soul killers.  If they happen naturally then I think they are great.  Otherwise they are like putting make up on a pig and trying to pass it off as human.

I remember a picture from my toddler days where someone was shaving a pig in a barber chair.  I found it terrifying. 

That little girl still lives inside of me, terrified of the horrible facades surrounding me, wondering how others can fail to see what is right there shimmering between reality and what is.

Walk beside me

Open the doors I do not see.

Reach out and offer me your hand, but let me decide when to take it.

Listen when I talk.

Talk to me from your heart.

And we will walk beside each other forever more.